Face-to-face media sharing using wireless mobile devices

Advanced personal wireless mobile devices, such as today's emerging smart phones, are capable computers that have the potential to enable individuals to share personal content, such as photographs, music, and video. Face to face sharing can be a satisfying and even emotional experience, yet it is not well supported by existing digital technologies, which typically isolate media into separate collections or require that they be manually combined into a single collection on a single machine. Federating wireless mobile devices with fixed infrastructure, such as a digital home entertainment center, provides a lightweight, unified, and intuitive way to share media among friends and family. This paper looks at both technological and social issues that surround sharing media using federated devices, considering the relevant emerging technologies, media types, and usage contexts.